Pathmaker Programming Guide

Controlling Default Screen Layout
Creating Requesters
5–28 067868 Tandem Computers Incorporated
Repetition refers to the number of repetitions of the current record or row to be
displayed on the application screen. Specifying more than one repetition produces
multiple instances of an entire reference object. This type of display cannot be
produced by using the OCCURS clause in DDL because OCCURS cannot be specified
at the record (01) level.
The most common use for repetition is to create a requester that lists records or tables
in the database.
The following points are guidelines for using repetition:
The default value for number of repetitions is one.
If you created a DB requester that has parent-child relationships, you can only
specify repetition for the lowermost children.
Suppose your DB requester has the following parent-child relationships:
A
/ \
B C
/ \
D E
You can only specify more than one repetition on C, D, and E.
A reference object that has a repetition greater than one cannot be used as a
parameter into or out of the requester.
Repetition is frequently displayed on the application screen in tabular format.
Tabular format is appropriate whenever a list is the best way of displaying
information. Some reference objects are not well suited to tabular format; in
particular, reference objects with long data fields might require more than 80
characters to display the elementary fields. When a reference object has long data
fields, the Pathmaker product continues the column titles and data fields on
subsequent lines. This example shows one repetition of a record with long data
fields in tabular format.
Title1 Title2 Title3
Title4 Title5
_____________ ___________________________ ______________
______ __________________________________________________
A reference object that requires multiple lines to display in tabular format is more
effective in either compressed or uncompressed format than in tabular format.
Here is the same record in compressed format:
RECORD-NAME
Title1 ____________ Title2 ___________________________
Title3 _______________ Title4 ______
Title5 _________________________________________________
If a reference object requires more than 5 lines to display in tabular format, you
cannot specify more than one repetition of the reference. This restriction prevents
unreadable screens.